Related Tag Surfer

Got a ton of good feedback from the related posts test, and thanks to that I’d like to introduce the Tag Surfer. Basically this takes the functionality of the related posts page, but gives you infinitely more control over what types of content you’re getting. The feature has also been renamed to “Tag Surfer” to give you a better idea of what’s going on.

Related posts would look at the tags you use and then grab posts based on that. Depending on your tag usage, it was either great or awful. If you tend to use tags like “music” or “life” that are very high volume and not too specific, your page was probably constantly scrolling with new, semi-random content.

The first thing you’ll notice about this new iteration of the related posts / tag surfer is that there is a list of your subscribed tags in the left-hand column. This is auto-populated from you tags the first time you view the page, but after that you have complete control. You can add tags that you’re interested in, or click the “X” next to any tag to remove it from your tag subscriptions.

Next the posts area on the right has a few minor improvements. The typography has been improved to make it a bit easier to read, and under the tags the ones that match your subscriptions are in bold, so you can easily see why a post is included on the related posts page. Finally if you happen to come across any spam or questionable content, there is a handy link to report it by each post.

Now when you see something you’re not at all interested in, you can see which tag brought it in and prune that tag from your subscriptions in the left-hand column. We also fixed a ton of reported bugs, but if you find any more simply use the feedback form at the top of your dashboard.

You can find the Tag Surfer under your Dashboard.

Email Newsletter

Missing out on the latest WordPress.com developments? Enter your email below to receive future announcements direct to your inbox. An email confirmation will be sent before you will start receiving notifications - please check your spam folder if you don't receive this.

It’s very interesting to see you guys tweaking this new feature to make it work. One thing that’s really terrific about WordPress is the transparency of the people who’re putting it together and the conversations they host about what they’re up to. As for the related tag surfer (which sounds like the thing you can do on Amazon where they let you pinpoint the sorts of books you like and probably has a real name, although I’m such a non-tech person I wouldn’t know it!), I’m impressed you’ve thought to give us a tool to find like-minded blogs. This is the sort of thing that adds immeasurably to the creation of a community — and that community is the signal achievement of WordPress. Thanks for working so hard on these kinds of things.

I wrote a very lengthy comment praising the tag surfer changes to the sky on a forum post in this thread below but the comment disappeared. http://wordpress.com/forums/topic.php?id=3369&replies=23#post-21883
I’m wondering if that’s because you would have preferred to have me post it here which is what I came here to do to copy and paste it from the forum. But I can’t do that now because the text is gone from the forum. Well, I meant every word I said so I hope you will post it here [she said while scratching her head].

On my blog I tend to use tags based on an Eastern philopsophy-Pagan-New Ager lexicon, and not too many people blog on Paganism and New Ageism. It’ll be nice to find other blogs and comment on them, too.

I wrote about this in the forums, but I guess I can repeat it here. I think this is a great addition to the already impressive range of things availible here. But if I could just make one suggestion…

Could you enable the user to select the language that the searched posts are written in? For instance, I write a lot about politics. In Swedish the word for ‘politics’ (and the tag) is ‘Politik’. Unfortunately the word ‘Politik’ exists in german, danish, norwegian, dutch and a whole other group of languages as well – which means I don’t see relevant posts for that tag in a relevant language.

Thanks a lot for this fantastic feature… I have been playing around with this feature and found that one of the tags are assigned by default (like Videos) and you could add more tags as you wish but you cannot remove the original tag (Videos). It just doesnt remove them. I don’t know how the default tags are assigned but it would be good if we could control which tags we want and not want…

These are some really awesome things you have put out today. WordPress is really cool.

Here’s one feature you should have, though, on the Tag Surfer: could you make it so you can “x out” of the posts you don’t want, in the same way you can “x out” of the tags you don’t want? That way, I wouldn’t have to scroll down the page and find a post all over again every time I wanted to see it.

You guys are awesome. I can’t wait to see what you’ll come up with next.

I like the idea, but the results don’t seem to work for me. Unrelated, stuff in Spanish, and lots of food pictures??
Clicking on the ‘x’s beside the tabs doesn’t seem to change results.
Didn’t make me want to visit any blogs, but did make me want to go visit the fridge.

Okay, and one suggestion…
It’d be cool to be able to click on the tab name, and see displayed only the posts relevant to that tag.
Only way to do that now, that I can see, is to delete all the other tags. Kind of a pain if you do want ’em.
That’d be a really useful addition for me.

Tag Surfer works! Well it might work better for less fussy surfers. I entered ‘Bovine accordion teachers’, and ‘Big boobed rat faced librarians’ – nothing. No-one out there even interested in ‘endophytes’. Oh well.

I have a problem with the “photos” tag as well. I try to X it out and it doesn’t change the results or disappear from my subscribed tags. I can delete other ones, but not this one. It’s a very general tag so I’m not interested in seeing it, but it won’t delete. What’s up with that?

Once it’s working properly, this seems like it will be an awesome feature. Thanks!

One flaw with this feature is that some blogs tend to post a whole lot, while other blogs tend not to post quite as often. I am interested in posts tagged “China”, for example. At the time of writing there are 38 posts total on the Tag Surfer page related to China, and 30 of those 38 posts all belong to one blog, chinaview.wordpress.com. It would be great if either WordPress.com would limit the number of posts any one blog can have on the Tag Surfer page to no more than 5, or give users individual control of how many posts they want to see on the Tag Surfer page from any particular blog, ranging from zero to all.

First: Tagsurfer is great. Second: What about a feature which filters out certain tags, kinda blacklisting-feature?
For instance i want to see all the Science tags but not Science postings which also have a Faith or Religion tag.
Pretty please? :)
Keep going! Great job!
Alex.

I love the function but it needs a bit more randomness in authors. I see the same peoples posts day in and day out in the “news” tag. Also tags like Rick Perry (gov of Texas) has only one hit. I know of at least 5 wordpress.com blogs that tag Rick Perry freduently.

/Note to self….quit yer gripin the dang function is “free”. Be grateful.

I think the tag surfer is great, and use it daily.
One suggestion I would have is have a way to sort or limit it by date. Sometimes I will be scrolling through it and come across a series of posts from 8 or 9 months ago and stop, not realizing that there are posts from 8 or 9 hours ago after those.

The function is a great idea. However, it should be possible to block posts from certain blogs from the tag surfer.

Here is my problem:

I have tagged e.g. “Australien” (Australia in Danish) as well as other themes in which I am interested in reading about in Danish.

Here is what happens: Posts from a hyperactive, hateful Danish anti-Islam blog, which also has the tag “Australia”, appear all the way down in my right-hand column pushing almost all other posts out.

Hate-blogs do not interest me at all – whatsoever the subject, so as a result my tag surfer is dead unless I remove “Australien” and other Danish tag words which also appear in “Hodja’s” impressing variety of Danish tag words.

So in my case, the tag surfer is useless unless I can block posts from that particular blog.

Matt@
I’ve had a similar problem to Anne’s above and am glad to hear there will be a screening feature.

Would you also consider the following as a feature? If I had a summary “teaser” I could readily make the choice “I’m interested'” and become a hit statistic on my friend’s blog in a single click. And long blog posts I may not really be interested in wouldn’t take up the whole screen.